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HYPOTHESIS Defined for English Language Learners

In entrepreneurial science, a hypothesis is used to formulate provisional ideas within a business setting. The formulated hypothesis is then evaluated where either the hypothesis is proven to be "true" or "false" through a verifiability - or falsifiability -oriented experiment. Any useful hypothesis will enable predictions by reasoning including deductive reasoning.

It might predict the outcome of an experiment in a laboratory setting or the observation of a phenomenon in nature. The prediction may also invoke statistics and only talk about probabilities.

Karl Popper , following others, has argued that a hypothesis must be falsifiable , and that one cannot regard a proposition or theory as scientific if it does not admit the possibility of being shown false. Other philosophers of science have rejected the criterion of falsifiability or supplemented it with other criteria, such as verifiability e. The scientific method involves experimentation, to test the ability of some hypothesis to adequately answer the question under investigation.

In contrast, unfettered observation is not as likely to raise unexplained issues or open questions in science, as would the formulation of a crucial experiment to test the hypothesis.

A thought experiment might also be used to test the hypothesis as well. In framing a hypothesis, the investigator must not currently know the outcome of a test or that it remains reasonably under continuing investigation. Only in such cases does the experiment, test or study potentially increase the probability of showing the truth of a hypothesis. If one cannot assess the predictions by observation or by experience , the hypothesis needs to be tested by others providing observations.

For example, a new technology or theory might make the necessary experiments feasible. People refer to a trial solution to a problem as a hypothesis, often called an " educated guess " [12] [2] because it provides a suggested outcome based on the evidence. However, some scientists reject the term "educated guess" as incorrect. Experimenters may test and reject several hypotheses before solving the problem. According to Schick and Vaughn, [13] researchers weighing up alternative hypotheses may take into consideration:.

A working hypothesis is a hypothesis that is provisionally accepted as a basis for further research [14] in the hope that a tenable theory will be produced, even if the hypothesis ultimately fails.

Working hypotheses are often used as a conceptual framework in qualitative research. The provisional nature of working hypotheses make them useful as an organizing device in applied research.

Here they act like a useful guide to address problems that are still in a formative phase. In recent years, philosophers of science have tried to integrate the various approaches to evaluating hypotheses, and the scientific method in general, to form a more complete system that integrates the individual concerns of each approach.

Notably, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend , Karl Popper's colleague and student, respectively, have produced novel attempts at such a synthesis. Concepts in Hempel's deductive-nomological model play a key role in the development and testing of hypotheses.

Most formal hypotheses connect concepts by specifying the expected relationships between propositions. When a set of hypotheses are grouped together they become a type of conceptual framework.

When a conceptual framework is complex and incorporates causality or explanation it is generally referred to as a theory. According to noted philosopher of science Carl Gustav Hempel "An adequate empirical interpretation turns a theoretical system into a testable theory: The hypothesis whose constituent terms have been interpreted become capable of test by reference to observable phenomena. Frequently the interpreted hypothesis will be derivative hypotheses of the theory; but their confirmation or disconfirmation by empirical data will then immediately strengthen or weaken also the primitive hypotheses from which they were derived.

Hempel provides a useful metaphor that describes the relationship between a conceptual framework and the framework as it is observed and perhaps tested interpreted framework. These might be viewed as strings which are not part of the network but link certain points of the latter with specific places in the plane of observation. By virtue of those interpretative connections, the network can function as a scientific theory.

In "actual scientific practice the process of framing a theoretical structure and of interpreting it are not always sharply separated, since the intended interpretation usually guides the construction of the theoretician.

When a possible correlation or similar relation between phenomena is investigated, such as whether a proposed remedy is effective in treating a disease, the hypothesis that a relation exists cannot be examined the same way one might examine a proposed new law of nature. In such an investigation, if the tested remedy shows no effect in a few cases, these do not necessarily falsify the hypothesis. Instead, statistical tests are used to determine how likely it is that the overall effect would be observed if the hypothesized relation does not exist.

If that likelihood is sufficiently small e. Otherwise, any observed effect may be due to pure chance. In statistical hypothesis testing, two hypotheses are compared. These are called the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. The null hypothesis is the hypothesis that states that there is no relation between the phenomena whose relation is under investigation, or at least not of the form given by the alternative hypothesis.

The alternative hypothesis, as the name suggests, is the alternative to the null hypothesis: The alternative hypothesis may take several forms, depending on the nature of the hypothesized relation; in particular, it can be two-sided for example: Conventional significance levels for testing hypotheses acceptable probabilities of wrongly rejecting a true null hypothesis are.

Whether the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, must be determined in advance, before the observations are collected or inspected. If these criteria are determined later, when the data to be tested are already known, the test is invalid. The above procedure is actually dependent on the number of the participants units or sample size that is included in the study. The ability of the test to accept a true alternative and thus to detect a real effect when it exists is termed the power of the test.

Note that no statistical test actually tests the H 1. A conjecture advanced for heuristic purposes, cast in a form that is amenable to confirmation or refutation by conducting of definable experiments and the critical assembly of empiric data; not to be confused with assumption, postulation, or unfocused speculation.

Antibodies are an exception; separate genes for variable and constant regions are rearranged to code for a single polypeptide.

It states that the third base of the tRNA anticodon does not have to pair with a complementary codon as do the first two but can form base pairs with any of several related codons. A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation. Something taken to be true for the purpose of argument or investigation; an assumption.

Kinds of hypotheses include causal hypothesis, null hypothesis, and predictive hypothesis. A conjecture cast in a form that is amenable to confirmation or refutation by experiment and the assembly of data; not to be confused with assumption, postulation, or unfocused speculation. In statistics, an indication that the results of an investigation on a population e.

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The research hypothesis is a paring down of the problem into something testable and falsifiable. In the above example, a researcher might speculate that the decline in the .

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A hypothesis is used in an experiment to define the relationship between two variables. The purpose of a hypothesis is to find the answer to a question. The purpose of a hypothesis is to find the answer to a question.

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research hypothesis A clinical trials term of art for the proposition that the study is designed to support or refute—e.g., blood pressure will be lowered by X amount in subjects who receive the test product. Research Hypotheses. The research hypothesis is central to all research endeavors, whether qualitative or quantitative, exploratory or explanatory. At its most basic, the research hypothesis states what the researcher expects to find – it is the tentative answer to the research question that guides the entire study.

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A hypothesis is a proposition that attempts to explain a set of facts in a unified way. It generally forms the basis of experiments designed to establish its plausibility. It generally forms the basis of experiments designed to establish its plausibility. A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot satisfactorily be explained with the available scientific theories.